Chapter 68:

Harry was actually surprised, as did it seem, were all of the onlookers. He looked at Alicia as she glared at him, her hand still raised.

"No one said that." she whispered "I cannot believe you even let those words slip from your mouth." Harry reached up to touch his cheek as he stared at her standing before him.

"I did not say that, nor will you ever hear me say it," Dumbledore replied quietly, watching them both as Harry stared at his sister. "Sirius was not a cruel man, he was kind to house-elves in general. He had no love for Kreacher, because Kreacher was a living reminder of the home Sirius had hated."

"A house you locked him in." Alicia said turning to Dumbledore "He did need to be hidden, but he did not need to be locked in the place that tortured him! That's why he was so reckless and always tried to leave!" she accused

"I was trying to keep Sirius alive," said Dumbledore quietly.

"People don't like being locked up!" Harry said furiously, rounding on him. "You did it to me all last summer —"

Dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his long-fingered hands. Alicia crossed her arms and waited. She could feel the anger bubbling if he refused to explain to Harry why he had done that.

"It is time," he said, "for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything. I ask only a little patience. You will have your chance to rage at me — to do whatever you like — when I have finished. I will not stop you."

Harry glared at him for a moment, then flung himself back into the chair opposite Dumbledore and waited. Dumbledore stared for a moment at the sunlit grounds outside the window, then looked back at Harry and said, "Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well — not quite whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years."

He paused. Harry said nothing. Alicia felt angry but she watched him silently still.

"You might ask — and with good reason — why it had to be so. Why could some Wizarding family not have taken you in? Many would have done so more than gladly, would have been honoured and delighted to raise you as a son.

"My answer is that my priority was to keep you alive. You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but myself realised. Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters — and many of them are almost as terrible as he — were still at large, angry, desperate, and violent. And I had to make my decision too with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe that Voldemort was gone forever? No. I knew not whether it would be ten, twenty, or fifty years before he re- turned, but I was sure he would do so, and I was sure too, knowing him as I have done, that he would not rest until he killed you.

"I knew that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is perhaps more extensive than any wizard alive. I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible if he ever returned to full power.

"But I knew too where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated — to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died to save you. She gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother's blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative."

"She doesn't love me," said Harry at once. "She doesn't give a damn —"

"But she took you," Dumbledore cut across him. "She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother's sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you."

"I still don't —"

"While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows this. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you houseroom may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years."

"What about Alicia?" Harry asked

"The charm extends out to me from you and Petunia, my protection stands as Petunia refuses to kick me out of the house. It doesn't need to be as strong because I'm not as important to Voldemort." Alicia explained and Harry looked at her and then to Dumbledore

"You knew this?" he asked angrily

"Dumbledore told me in the summer when he whisked me away without letting me tell you anything." Alicia admitted turning to him

"And you didn't think to tell me?"

"To be honest, it escaped my mind." she confessed before turning back to the window.

"Wait," said Harry. "Wait a moment."

He sat up straighter in his chair, staring at Dumbledore.

"You sent that Howler. You told her to remember — it was your voice —"

"I thought," said Dumbledore, inclining his head slightly, "that she might need reminding of the pact she had sealed by taking you. I suspected the dementor attack might have awoken her to the dangers of having you as a surrogate son."

"It did," said Harry quietly. "Well — my uncle more than her. He wanted to chuck me out, but after the Howler came she — she said I had to stay." He stared at the floor for a moment, then said, "But what's this got to do with…" he cut off, not able to say it.

"Five years ago, then," continued Dumbledore, as though he had not paused in his story, "you arrived at Hogwarts, as did Alicia, you both had met already and were neither as happy nor as well nourished as I would have liked, perhaps, yet alive and healthy. You were not a pampered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well.

"And then… well, you will remember the events of your first year at Hogwarts quite as clearly as I do. You rose magnificently to the challenge that faced you, and sooner — much sooner — than I had anticipated, you found yourself face-to-face with Voldemort. You survived again. You did more. You delayed his return to full power and strength. You fought a man's fight. I was… prouder of you than I can say.

"Yet there was a flaw in this wonderful plan of mine," said Dumbledore. "An obvious flaw that I knew, even then, might be the undoing of it all. And yet, knowing how important it was that my plan should succeed, I told myself that I would not permit this flaw to ruin it. I alone could prevent this, so I alone must be strong. And here was my first test, as you lay in the hospital wing, weak from your struggle with Voldemort."

"You didn't want to tell us." Alicia said "You didn't want to explain why Voldemort even tried to kill Harry, that's what was in that prophecy." Dumbledore nodded.

"Don't you remember asking me, as you lay in the hospital wing, why Voldemort had tried to kill you when you were a baby?"

Harry nodded.

"Ought I to have told you then?"

"I don't see how that is a flaw." Alicia admitted

"You do not see the flaw in the plan yet? No… perhaps not. Well, as you know, I decided not to answer you. Eleven, I told myself, was much too young to know. I had never intended to tell you when you were eleven. The knowledge would be too much at such a young age.

"I should have recognised the danger signs then. I should have asked myself why I did not feel more disturbed that you both had already asked me the question to which I knew, one day, I must give a terrible answer. I should have recognised that I was too happy to think that I did not have to do it on that particular day… You were too young, much too young.

"And so we entered your second year at Hogwarts. And once again you both met challenges even grown wizards and witches have never faced. Once again you acquitted yourself beyond my wildest dreams. You did not ask me again, however, why Voldemort had left that mark upon you. We discussed your scar, oh yes… We came very, very close to the subject. Why did I not tell you everything?

"Well, it seemed to me that twelve was, after all, hardly better than eleven to receive such information. I allowed you to leave my presence, bloodstained, exhausted but exhilarated, and if I felt a twinge of unease that I ought, perhaps, have told you then, it was swiftly silenced. You were still so young, you see, and I could not find it in me to spoil that night of triumph…" Alicia took a deep breath and he looked at her.

"Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid. Alicia?"

"You wanted to protect us and our happiness. You didn't want to put such information on our shoulders." she realised "You grew to care about us too much." he nodded and Harry looked between them.

"I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act.

"Is there a defence? I defy anyone who has watched you as I have — and I have watched you both more closely than you can have imagined — not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands.

"We entered your third year. I watched from afar as you struggled to repel dementors, as you found Sirius, learned what he was and rescued him. Was I to tell you then, at the moment when you had triumphantly snatched your godfather from the jaws of the Ministry? But now, at the age of thirteen, my excuses were running out. Young you might be, but you had proved you were exceptional. My conscience was uneasy, Harry. I knew the time must come soon…

"But you both came out of the maze last year, Alicia most un-expectantly, having watched Cedric Diggory die, having escaped death so narrowly yourselves… and I did not tell you, though I knew, now Voldemort had returned, I must do it soon. And now, tonight, I know you have long been ready for the knowledge I have kept from you for so long, because you have proved that I should have placed the burden upon you before this. My only defence is this: I have watched you both struggling under more burdens than any student who has ever passed through this school, and I could not bring myself to add another — the greatest one of all."

Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not speak.

"I still don't understand."

"Voldemort tried to kill you when you were a child because of a prophecy made shortly before your birth. He knew the prophecy had been made, though he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill you when you were still a baby, believing he was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. He discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curse intended to kill you backfired. And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he has been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return: the knowledge of how to destroy you."

"What was in that prophecy?" Alicia asked and Dumbledore turned to her "What was it that caused Voldemort to come to our house?"

The sun had risen fully now. Dumbledore's office was bathed in it. The glass case in which the sword of Godric Gryffindor resided gleamed white and opaque, the fragments of the instruments Harry had thrown to the floor and Alicia had smashed, glistened like raindrops, and behind him, the baby Fawkes made soft chirruping noises in his nest of ashes.

"The prophecy's smashed," Harry said blankly. "I was pulling Neville up those benches in the — the room where the archway was, and I ripped his robes and it fell…"

"The thing that smashed was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly."

"Who heard it?" asked Harry, even Alicia knew he thought he knew the answer already.

"I did," said Dumbledore. "On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head Inn. I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all. The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer, and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave."

"So it was Professor Trelawney." Alicia sighed and Dumbledore nodded to her, smiling.

Dumbledore got to his feet and walked past Harry and Alicia to the black cabinet that stood beside Fawkes's perch. He bent down, slid back a catch, and took from inside it the shallow stone basin, carved with runes around the edges, in which Harry had seen his father tormenting Snape. Dumbledore walked back to the desk, placed the Pensieve upon it, and raised his wand to his own temple. From it, he withdrew silvery, gossamer-fine strands of thought clinging to the wand, and deposited them in the basin. He sat back down behind his desk and watched his thoughts swirl and drift inside the Pensieve for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he raised his wand and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.

A figure rose out of it, draped in shawls, her eyes magnified to enormous size behind her glasses, and she revolved slowly, her feet in the basin. But when Sibyll Trelawney spoke, it was not in her usual ethereal, mystic voice, but in harsh, hoarse tones.

"THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES… BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES… AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT… AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES… THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES…"

Alicia stared at the pensieve. The slowly revolving Professor Trelawney sank back into the silver mass below and vanished.

The silence within the office was absolute. Neither Dumbledore nor Harry nor any of the portraits made a sound. Even Fawkes had fallen silent.

Alicia started to shake her head. "No…" she mumbled "No… no!" Dumbledore glanced up at her.

"Professor Dumbledore?" Harry said very quietly, glancing at his sister. "It… did that mean… What did that mean?"

"It meant," said Dumbledore, "that the person who has the only chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good was born at the end of July, nearly sixteen years ago. This boy would be born to parents who had already defied Voldemort three times."

Neither can live while the other survives… the words seemed to be shouting in Alicia's head and the pain that was throbbing in her chest from Sirius' loss seemed to pound faster and more painfully.

"It means — me?"

Dumbledore surveyed him for a moment through his glasses.

"The odd thing is, Harry," he said softly, "that it may not have meant you at all. Sibyll's prophecy could have applied to two wizard boys, both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom."

"But then… but then, why was it my name on the prophecy and not Neville's?"

"And the dark lord will mark him as his equal," Alicia whispered. She was staring at the wall. Dumbledore nodded to her.

"The official record was relabelled after Voldemort's attack on you as a child," said Dumbledore. "It seemed plain to the keeper of the Hall of Prophecy that Voldemort could only have tried to kill you because he knew you to be the one to whom Sibyll was referring."

"Then — it might not be me?" said Harry.

"I am afraid, as your sister pointed out," said Dumbledore slowly, looking as though every word cost him a great effort, "that there is no doubt that it is you."

"But you said — Neville was born at the end of July too — and his mum and dad —"

"You are forgetting the next part of the prophecy, the final identifying feature of the boy who could vanquish Voldemort… Voldemort himself would 'mark him as his equal.' And so he did, Harry. He chose you, not Neville. He gave you the scar that has proved both blessing and curse."

"But he might have chosen wrong!" said Harry. "He might have marked the wrong person!"

"He chose the boy he thought most likely to be a danger to him," said Dumbledore. "And notice this, Harry. He chose, not the pureblood (which, according to his creed, is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing), but the half-blood, like himself. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he intended, but gave you powers, and a future, which have fitted you to escape him not once, but four times so far — something that neither your parents, nor Neville's parents, ever achieved. At the same time he also gave you something else he never had,"

"Me." Alicia mumbled and Dumbledore nodded

"Voldemort seemed unaware, or unconcerned, that the Potters had had twins. And by 'marking you as his equal' he marked Alicia as well."

"And where would you be, without me," Alicia said. Though she didn't seem to really be registering what she was even saying, let alone what she was replying to.

"Why did he do it, then?" said Harry, who felt numb and cold. "Why did he try and kill me as a baby? He should have waited to see whether Neville or I looked more dangerous when we were older and tried to kill whoever it was then —"

"That might, indeed, have been the more practical course," said Dumbledore, "except that Voldemort's information about the prophecy was incomplete. The Hog's Head Inn, which Sibyll chose for its cheapness, has long attracted, shall we say, a more interesting clientele than the Three Broomsticks. As you and your friends found out to your cost, and I to mine that night, it is a place where it is never safe to assume you are not being overheard. Of course, I had not dreamed, when I set out to meet Sibyll Trelawney, that I would hear anything worth overhearing. My — our — one stroke of good fortune was that the eavesdropper was detected only a short way into the prophecy and thrown from the building."

"So he only heard…?"

"He heard only the first part, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort. Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you — again marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait or to learn more. He did not know that you would have 'power the Dark Lord knows not' —"

"I don't know if I'd count that fortunate. Considering what ended up happening with our parents and Neville's…" Alicia mumbled "I'd have thought it more fortunate if he'd heard it all as well as you." she sighed though, because even as she said this, she knew it was the more selfish thought. "Even though he wouldn't have been vanquished for almost fourteen years." she mumbled.

"But I don't!" said Harry in a strangled voice. "I haven't any powers he hasn't got, I couldn't fight the way he did tonight, I can't possess people or — or kill them —"

"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," interrupted Dumbledore, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

"Love." Alicia mumbled and Dumbledore nodded.

"Alicia, you brought that out in him. Your connection to Harry, is such a strong bond, holds such emotions, that Harry was able to push Voldemort out, something no witch or wizard as been able to do before."

Alicia chuckled once. "How do you put love into a room?" she couldn't help but ask.

"The end of the prophecy… it was something about… 'neither can live…' "

" '… while the other survives,' " said Dumbledore.

Alicia closed her eyes and she turned around, took a few steps and sat herself on the floor, pulling her hands to her face.

"So," said Harry, dredging up the words from what felt like a deep well of despair inside him, "so does that mean that… that one of us has got to kill the other one… in the end?"

"Yes," said Dumbledore.

She felt the tears on her hands. She had just lost one of the two family members she had left, only to discover that it was inevitable that she may loose the last. Harry could win and defeat Voldemort, but he could also loose, and Alicia…

Was she bound to be alone in this world? Was that her torture, that she would, forever, be loosing the people she cared about?

She felt a hand on her head and looked up through her tears to see Dumbledore. He wasn't smiling at her, in fact she could see that his eyes were glassy as though with tears themselves.

"Despite the two of you going through everything together, I am sorry for you Alicia." he said "And I am sorry for many reasons. You told me, a few times, about the power of information, and you warned he something worse could happen, but I did not listen. Despite knowing how brilliantly your mind works and collects information, I did not heed the warning you gave me to protect your family."

"And now," she sobbed "You tell me, that it's inevitable… that I could loose those I have left, right after having lost one already, and may forever be alone." the tears poured over her eyes lids and down her cheeks and she scrunched up her eyes crying. Dumbledore actually pulled her into a hug as she cried.

"I feel I owe you both another explanation, Harry, Alicia," said Dumbledore hesitantly. "You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you both as prefects? I must confess… that I rather thought… you had enough responsibility to be going on with."

Alicia paused as she felt something drop onto her hair and she looked up to see the man himself was crying.